Expansion Talent calculator:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...n/talents.html

Expansion Spells:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...an/spells.html

I primarily am PVE focused, never really cared to do much PVP in this game so that's where I base most of my decisions off of.

Elemental-
Unrelenting storm sounds pretty hot, raid buffed I imagine most would get ~40 mana/5. Since they clearly don't want to give shamans a spirit based regen in combat this is probably one of my favorite new talents to hear about. Totem of wrath and the new wrath of air totem finally gives us a real reason to be with the casters. But who knows where you'll want your shamans when you'll only have 2-3 in a 25 man raid.

Restoration-
Nature's blessing looks nice adding roughly 100 to healing and damage but you can't get the full talent if you're getting unrelenting storm. Earth shield seems pretty worthless with only a 30% chance to avoid interruption. You can't exactly chain cast it as it costs 600 mana as well. Finally a talent to improve chain heal as well, too bad by the time expansion comes out end game raiders probably won't be wearing much TS to combine with the 3 piece bonus. Water shield, just another example of not wanting to give shamans spirit based mana regen. For 50 mana you get 285 mana back when all the globes expire which is a nice return. I'm guessing this won't stack with lightning shield so no 8/9 earthshatter bonus with it.

Enhancement-
I know from a raiding perspective I don't give two squats about duel wield and last I checked there's not a lot of shaman gear with enough strength to make Shamanistic Rage worthwhile. A shaman using 2 fast weapons could keep unleashed rage up quite a bit in a rogue group with windfury it seems this would be a good boost to overall DPS. Bloodlust cost 750 mana(roughly 10% of my mana when I'm raid buffed) which seems a little excessive given the 10 minute cooldown. Bloodlust + shamanistic rage + imp weapon totems and I'm sure the rogues would give me sex though.

It seems like blizzard is really giving us some valuable raid tools that aren't based solely in the resto tree and actually benefit more than just melee. Given what you guys have seen how will you spec? I know I'll be going 25/0/36 personally

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...51055310510000

For pve I don't think it's worth giving up nature's blessing for unrelenting storm, so if you give up unrelenting storm which you need 25 points to get then you basically have the points to go crazy in restoration. Like so:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...51355310515321

For an elemental shaman in pvp I'll probably do something like this:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...51004010000000

Not really sold on lightning overload though, I'm not a big fan of small chance, insta win abilities. So I might instead go for some points in elemental precision or focused mind.

The enhance/resto 41 point talents looks kind of weak. Though both trees look to have more than 41 talent points worth of good talents in them.

Seeing the Shaman talents makes me want to reroll.

Widow's Embrace + Hammer of the Twisting Nether + 2 healing power is just over 500 healing 0_o

The elemental and enhancement new trees seem to fulfill theur roles :

- be powerfull
- be less "selfish" than they currently are
- offer a DPS potential that resto shaman will not have

An elemental shaman will be usefull in raids

Don't forget the x2 Brilliant Mana Oils :D I've jokingly said they should replace Stormstrike with Dual Wield for a long time now, and the fact that it's in makes me REALLY want to play my old Shaman.

A 0/31/21+ healing Shaman that melees in between casts would be interesting. Dual Weilding two healing weapons would be worth Nature's Blessing, I think.

A full (44) Enhancement Shaman can go into the Elemental tree for Clearcasting and 2/3 Elemental Devestation OR Restoration for Totemic Mastery and Nature's Guidance. I wonder how viable spamming rank 1 shocks to for Clearcasting/Elemental Devestation procs would be. Elemental Devestation would give more Unleashed Rage procs too. It's all very synergized.

Elemenetal - 40/0/21, focusing on mana saving, can actually prove to be the first possibility of shaman sustained spell DPS. Right now, gear doesn't support it, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Until then, it still remains our most effective PvP tree, and it does a terrific job improving our spell damage.

Resto- as listed is a HUGE buff to our raid healing role, as it should be. 30% of intellect to dmg/healing means (assuming 400 int at 70 with gear) +120. 20% to Chain heal. Earth Shield doesn't have a listed cooldown. I reserve judgement on it until we find out. I would assume it's 10 minutes, in which case its use would have to be determined through experience.

Enhancement - I am impressed. Note that the tooltip on Stormstrike says "with all equipped weapons". If they allow us to cast our weapon buffs on both weapons, DW enhancement may become a force to be reckoned with. The mental quickness reduction of instant spell mana cost by 6% and the 41 point talent of mana regen lets me know that Blizzard has finally come to realize the biggest deficiency with Enhancment and hybridization: mana. Perhaps the die-hard melee shamans will also come to accept our complete dependence on mana.

The expansion could be the growth our class needed as hybrids. We will have to wait and see.

Wrath of Air totem - the +dmg totem is a great boon, BUT IT'S YET ANOTHER AIR TOTEM. Looks like group composition is going to be key. WF for a DPS warrior group, GoA for standard DPS, and Wrath of Air for caster DPS. Welcome to our post expansion niche, boys.

Fire Elemental Totem - The new fire totem looks really neato, and I'm curious to see what it really does. Does it cast an AoE from range? The listed tooltip seems to suggest it. Does it gain damage from our +dmg? Does it gain aggro? Does it have HP, or is the totem its only weakness? Fire totem talent seems a LOT better now. 20 min cooldown suggests a high power level

Bloodlust - yay! More raid niche.

Water Shield - Now THIS is creativity. Well done. If we can have Earthen Shield, Water Shield, and Lightning Shield at the same time....

Earth Elemental Totem - Just like the fire counterpart, what does this really do? 20 min cooldown suggests a high power level


Overall, I think the improvements to our damage capabilities will allow our different possible specs to define us better, instead of Resto or don't raid. I WELCOME paladins to the horde. Let em heal imo, let the shamans be the ultimate DPS enchancer.

3 shields, 2 elemental totems, raid DPS talents, so far so good!

25 person cap -> 1 elemental, 1 enh, 1 resto?

the big question for me is will a high enhance shaman be something that really helps in a raid setting.
something along the lines of this:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...51020000000000
enhance focus with low mana spells/totems.
or
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...51050010000000
with ns for patch/emergencz healing
or finally
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000
full offense.

or do we get our normal healbot role.

I think they will add "Main Hand" keyword on the healing/dmg weapons.

The elemental tree is still selfish except for the 41 talent point.
The enhancement tree is lovable ( dual wielding fist weapon with bloodlust, a dream comes true )
The restoration tree is a question mark for me. I really don't understand Earth shield and his usefulness.

Build : http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...51300010000000

The main question from me is if a 40 Enhancement 21 Restoration Shaman build can still handle raid healing by dual-wielding two healing weapons. The 2nd 1-hander makes up for Purification, but the shaman will be missing out on Unrelenting Storm/Nature's Blessing, plus all the little Restoration talents like Healing Way and Mana Tide totem.